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Louisiana Passes Intelligent Design Law
H0D_G writes "The US state of Louisiana has passed the 'Science Education Act,' a piece of legislation that could allow Intelligent design to be taught in schools. From the article: 'The act is designed to slip ID in "through the back door"'"
Well, yes, they did. It was a small inland lake that people lived around, and a large storm caused the barrier between it and the sea to erode, and the sea came into the lake. It flooded everything for 20 miles from the shore of the lake. The survivors of this made the great flood origin story.
They found huts and such 20 miles out from shore, and the geological evidence backed this up, which is why they think its true.
Link for the interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deluge_(mythology)#Hypotheses_of_origin_of_Flood_myths/
neither is there any concrete scientific evidence of evolution, apart from the strong surviving over the week, which can hardly be used to back up macro-evolution.
Dude, you might want to get your facts right : http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/dn14094-bacteria-make-major-evolutionary-shift-in-the-lab.html
Complexity is a measure of our ignorance...
.. as it also opens the door for the teachings of our noodly saviour
Not to pick on the Christians, but they have a long tradition in the USA of trying to twist school curriculum & resources towards *only* their message.
Whenever athiests/pagans/wiccans/other use the same loophole, the Christians tend to get mighty upset.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
There are plenty of well-documented examples of bacteria developing resistance to antibiotics. That, in the context the bacteria are in, is beneficial and passed on.
There are a bazillion other examples, but this is the most obvious and trivial. Because not only can you do experiments like that in the lab, it tends to mess up your *other* experiments if you assume that a strain of bacteria will forever be antibiotic-sensitive.
Apparently you haven't seen this write up on Ars. It's about a study over a series of years, at the end of which a novel mutation developed that was beneficial to an E. coli population that started out from a single inoculum.
http://arstechnica.com/journals/science.ars/2008/06/04/tracking-adaptation-as-bacteria-evolve
Over the course of 44,000 generations, they evolved the ability to metabolize citrate. They'd been incubated with citrate since 1988 and recently started using it as a substrate for metabolism. This study satisfies all 3 of the criteria you just indicated
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
Was it an "entirely different species" or was it just an adaptation?
One of the defining characteristics of E.coli is the inability to metabolize citrate. If it metabolizes citrate, it's not E.coli anymore.
Could you cross breed this "new" version of citrate metabolizing E. Coli with the original strain?
Erm, you need to consult a biology textbook about how bacteria reproduce. Hint: They don't need partners to do so. That makes cross-breeding a bit difficult. Especially since a strain of E.coli was used that doesn't do the conjugation thing, either.
Correct.
The practice of celibacy itself is more of the problem than the Catholic church or priesthood, per se.
Interesting tidbits:
1) The Apostle Peter (erroneously deemed the first pope) definitely was married.
2) The Apostle Paul declared his situation as somewhat of a unique gift, not a requirement of ministry.
3) The Bible clearly teaches celibacy is not something you should attempt to maintain if you retain desire. Instead you should get married. This is why one of the first things priests who started studying the Bible anew in the days of the Reformation was to renounce their vow of celibacy and get married.
4) The Bible more or less predicts the heresy of enforced celibacy would arise in later years.
5) In the Catholic church, this is NOT an issue of doctrine. It is simply an issue of Church Law. As such, any pope could wave their hands and dispense with the practice altogether. The structure is fairly rigidly in place at this point. Such a pope would likely be killed or at the very least "managed" so as not to do this. But the point is the Catholic church could do away with this by the mere flick of a pen.
6) Since it is not an issue of doctrine, there actually ARE married priests in the Catholic church. There is an established procedure for such. However, these are rather rare at the moment.
Not at all. "God = Universe" is pantheism, which predates Christianity, yet the latter has considered pantheism to be a heresy from the very beginning. And indeed, the central tenet of Christianity is the idea of a God as a person, and Universe as his creation - and certainly a creator cannot be a part of what he himself has created entirely. It is the same in all Abrahamic religions.
Wrong again. Allah does have personhood. The restriction is in place so that people do not start to worship the image of Allah instead of Allah himself (and seeing how Christians worship images and symbols of Christ, and icons of saints, it makes some sense).
I just feel, and this is from my limited understand of evolution and Darwinism, that evolution isn't truly science either.
Based on your comments, I'd say that it's not so much your understanding of evolution that's lacking, as your understanding of the principles of science.
For a theory to qualify as "truly science" absolutely does not require it to be perfect or complete. A scientific theory is not a collection of facts that reveal an absolute truth flawlessly. How could it? What is important is not the answer, but how you get to it.
The scientific method, as used by evolutionary biology, chemistry, astrophysics, and every other branch of the sciences, requires that you take four steps:
On the other hand, Intelligent Design follows a much simpler process:
The beauty of evolutionary theory is that at any moment, someone could turn up some piece of evidence that absolutely, undeniably proves that it's not true. And if that happened, biologists would start working on a new theory that fits the facts better. That's how it's supposed to work!
Tell me: What would have to happen, tomorrow, to prove that the "theory" of Intelligent Design is false?
That's why it doesn't belong in Science classes.
-- Note to Mods: There is a good reason there's no "-1 Disagree" option. --
ID is not a scientific theory, but it is a theory. The word simply has multiple meanings, and I believe a great deal of confusion comes from this unfortunate fact.
In the vernacular, "theory" is a guess used to explain some event, usually on circumstantial or incomplete evidence - an idea based on speculation. Non-Slashdot nerds use the word all day long to explain things, so it's not a bastardization. A close scientific equivalent is hypothesis.
A scientific theory, is, of course, entirely different. Two meanings, one word, and one horrible coincidence that gives IDers ammunition against us evil Neo-Darwinists :)